In Yeats' Long-Legged Fly, there is, I think, strong corroboration for my earlier-posted view of a Yeatsian conflation of Hobbes-Gyres. In each of the 3 stanzas, consequence--That civilisation...; That the topless towers...; That girls at puberty...--precedes cause : Caesar crossing the Rubicon; Helen shuffling off to Troy; Michael Angelo completing The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. As earlier argued for Yeats, the Fates have so predisposed these 3 personalities that they now find themselves at a climactic pivotal point--more noticeably climactic in the case of Caesar and Helen than of Yeats and Michaelangelo, because for the former pair it entailed a vast, and known, historical significance. In each case, we are viewing the moment of decision to act, which sets off a gyre of untold significance to the decider and for civilisation.
The moment is one of solitary 'cerebral motion', i.e. no one else is intruding their opinions, personality, 'motion', so the responsibility for decision and consequence lies solely with the decider. There are people in attendance, people who will be embroiled in the consequences of the decision, but they purposefully keep their distance, entreat the silence of others, and that the others keep their distance--and indeed that we keep silent as we home in across time. The moment is pointedly 'cerebral'--His mind...Her mind...His mind ; eyes fixed upon nothing ; she thinks--but it is accompanied by the visible emblems of 'animal motion' : Long-legged fly ; A hand under his head ; her feet practise a tinker shuffle ; His hand moves to and fro ( recalling the Yeatsian battered kettle at the heel ). And this stress on 'animal motion' is apt, for it is 'animal motion'--of the same sort as Yeats attributes to his contemporary political activists and military mayhem--that ensues from the decision : civil war in Ancient Rome, the siege of Troy, the extreme physical endeavour necessary to paint the Sistine ceiling.
The Gyres set off by the decision of Caesar and Helen are so obvious as to be self-explanatory, but that set off by Michaelangelo seems oblique and of questionable significance--at least at first. This stanza is like looking down through the middle of a gyre at a succession of concentric circles : Yeats is creating a picture of Michael Angelo who is creating a picture of ' The Creation of Adam', which in turn depicts the creation of mankind through human generation. A fully-formed Adam languorously reclines apart from God, and God's right hand stretches forth to infuse Adam not with life, for that is already plainly there, but with the power of procreation. This is symbolised in that God's left arm curves round the neck of a fully-formed Eve, culminating In God's left index finger resting on the shoulder of a human child, again fully-formed.
Yeats has, I think, chosen this particular painting because therein he identifies a kindred spirit. Michaelangelo, in the same way as did the Byzantime Iconodules, uses the image of divine and human hand converging, as intermediary to a prototype Idea : a purposeful, and divinely preordained--a fully-formed Eve and child precede the God and Adam convergence of divine and human index fingers--infusion into Adam of the power of creation through human generation.
Hands and fingers--the most potent emblems, the most dexterous, manipulative components, of human ;animal motion'--are the central foci of this painting about the creation of mankind. Its title is elliptical but telling : Adam is already depicted as created, fully-formed, but indolent, languorous, so the Creation Michaelangelo depicts is the subsequent creation, the event where he is infused with the power of procreation. It is then that he too comes into his strength, and the primordial Gyre of human history is set off. This Gyre is divinely determined. Out of its widening Gyre successive gyres will spring, at the initiative of the products of this first : human beings.
The reponsibility for the eventualities arising out of the human continuum is here transferred into human hands, and Michaelangelo depicts Eve's awareness of this awesome responsibility as she looks, anxious, apprehensive, wide-eyed, across at the yet-languorous Adam. She is a girl at puberty (who) finds The first Adam in her thought. Every succeeding girl at puberty throughout the human continuum will not have Eve's prescience of her divinely-allotted role and its consequences. So each, when looking at her own 'Adam' and thinking of the human product of their union, will not know that their child will be a Caesar, a Helen, one who will set off a new Gyre.
To counterbalance this nescience on the part of every girl at puberty, a nescience about the possible import in each's individual, future child, Yeats would have it that every girl at puberty be intruded into the Sistine Chapel, indeed shut in, and contemporary children specifically shut out : specifically, not because their chatter would disrupt the silent ambience requisite for the artist's concentration on his subject, though this is still a relevant factor. More pertinent is that if the children were present, the girls at puberty, having absorbed the awesome import of the painting, would be inclined to read it as being possibly specific to any one of the children currently around them. For Yeats, the message of the painting is specific to each girl alone, and to her yet unborn child, so Keep those (living) children out. This done, the girls may find the first Adam in their thought, may individually be in silent, solitary communion with, and attendance on, Michaelangelo's labour pangs as he strains to give birth to his vision of the Created Adam. Having absorbed the message of the painting, each girl will then know that her child may well set off a Gyre, may ensure That civilisation may not sink or That the topless towers be burnt. She would then be as the depicted Eve, looking anxiously, apprehensively, wide-eyed, across--or in this case up--at the languorous, reclining Adam being given the power of creation by a reclining God, and the whole being created by a reclining Michaelangelo. From a nescient girl at puberty, she would then be transformed into a prescient Eve. In this still, yet climactic, ambience, she would, deep in thought, be
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind move upon silence.
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